


What The Cat Dragged In

by scribe-tuesday (Leofuller)



Series: This One's A Keeper [2]
Category: Original Work, Sports Fiction (not RPF)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-07-30 07:47:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20093782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leofuller/pseuds/scribe-tuesday
Summary: Liz has always liked mementos





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [McSpot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/McSpot/gifts).

> There are no actual cats in this story, just to warn you in case anybody was hoping for one based on the title.

####  **21 August, 2054**

Esme’s on the verge of sulking. All of her friends are either away on holiday, or off doing whatever it is that thirteen year olds do during school holidays these days, and she’s stuck in the house with her grandmother.

Liz can sympathise, even if she’s personally happier that Esme’s not out participating in whatever non-parentally-approved activities her friends are involved in. It must be pretty boring. God knows Liz wasn’t that interesting to teenagers when she _ was _ one, she must be dull as dishwater now that she’s in her sixties.

“Do you want to help me dig out embarrassing photos for Mum’s birthday?” Liz has got a _ lot _ of photos that Olivia tried to make her destroy, of Olivia’s awkward goth phase, the horrors of 30’s fashion, and that thing that all the girls did with their eyebrows back then.

Esme nods, which is about as much enthusiasm as she’s capable of through her teenage ennui.

She still seems sulky when they get into the office. It used to be a guest bedroom, when Olivia and Jacob were younger, it became an office when Liz ran her own business for a few years, and it’s gradually been the place where their collection of souvenirs and bits and pieces has accumulated.

Liz never wants to move house. This room alone would be a nightmare to pack up.

“We used to have these uploaded into a cloud album so everybody could see them.” Liz pulls the hard drives down from their shelf. “But your mother was always threatening to hack in and delete the ones she didn’t like, so we keep back-ups.”

Esme, Ray and Niamh always liked going through the hard drives when they were little, even if the cloud albums were available. Something about connecting the drives to a screen and going through the original folders appealed to them. Liz always thought that it couldn’t compare with leafing through the physical albums that her own grandmother kept, but every generation changes.

“What’s in the big box?” Esme’s not looking at the hard drive units as Liz stacks them on the desk, she’s looking up at the top shelf of the wardrobe.

“Hmm?” Liz turns to see what she’s looking at. “Oh, that’s a memory box.” 

“Can I…?” Esme takes two steps towards the wardrobe and then pauses, as if she’s remembered that sometimes memories are private.

“Of course.” Liz doesn’t mind. It’s nice to see Esme showing some kind of interest, for one thing, but Liz has never minded talking about the things in the box to anybody who wants to listen.

It’s a big, flat box, originally designed to hold precious items of clothing. There’s another one somewhere with her wedding veil in, the one that Olivia wore on her own wedding day, and that Liz secretly hopes that her grandchildren might like to wear one day.

It’s dusty, and that makes Liz feel a little sad, because the things in this box are things she always wants to remember.

Esme sits on the futon with the box beside her, lifts the lid carefully and sets it aside.

The items inside are all packed up separately, to keep them organised, each with a little label.

“_Saturday 18th January 2014.” _ Esme lifts the first box out. “What’s this?”

***

####  **18 January, 2014**

Liz’s Facebook feed is full of people using their phone batteries and data plans to complain that the power has gone down and the wifi with it. Based on who’s complaining, it looks like about half the village is experiencing a power cut, although friends in Stafford are helpfully announcing that they’ve still got power.

Liz takes a photo of the lamp, glowing by the fireplace, and posts it.

** _Still got power for now, and at least the heating and the oven are gas, so I guess I’m set._ **

It’s the tiresome part of January, all the fun from Christmas has worn off, dieting is getting dull (see: one extra-cheesy home-made lasagne ready to go into the oven) and payday still seems to be a very long way away. The point is, Liz is bored and broke and she can post dull but smug Facebook updates if she wants to.

** _Lucky. _ ** Joel from work comments soon after. ** _We’ve got a burst pipe as well, so no power, no heating, no running water :(_ **

Joel from work isn’t somebody Liz is particularly close to. Their interactions are generally limited to small talk by the coffee machine, the occasional lift to work if one of them has car problems, and liking the odd post on Facebook.

She is pretty bored, though, and that’s really the only reason she texts.

**Everything okay? Sounds dire on FB.**

**Lol we’ll survive. Just a pain because it’s freezing and now we can’t cook lunch - not what we need on a game day!!**

Game day. Because Joel - who works in the database support team and always matches his socks to his novelty tie - plays ice hockey, of all things.

Liz will continue to blame boredom for what she does next.

**You could come over here if you want. I’ve got water, heat and power and I’m making lasagne for lunch.**

**That sounds amazing, if you’re sure? Can I bring Ryan?**

Ryan must be the friend who’s been living in Joel’s spare room since about a month after Joel’s girlfriend left him.

Liz casts a sad look at the lasagne, sitting on the side. It’s more than enough to feed three people, but her plans to eat leftovers for a couple of days are evaporating in front of her.

**Sure, no problem.**

**You’re a star!**

Liz turns her attention to getting the rest of the clean laundry put away before Joel and his friend arrive.

It’s a bit odd, having Joel in her house, but they’ve always got on well enough at work and it gets comfortable really quickly. Partly because the guys really do seem to appreciate her cooking, and partly because Joel’s so embarrassed by the whole thing that she’s automatically trying to put him at ease.

Plus his friend is a little… strange. A bit twitchy. 

“Sorry about Ryan.” Joel waits until Ryan goes to the bathroom to apologise. “I’m used to him so I forget that if you’re not a hockey person you don’t automatically make allowances for goalies.”

Liz must look a bit blank.

“They’re always a bit odd. Ryan’s cool normally, it’s just that it bothers him when his game day routine gets upset. He’d probably want to go home for his nap if it wasn’t so cold.”

“His nap?” Seriously?

Joel laughs. “Yeah, that’s pretty normal for hockey players.”

“Do you need a nap too?” Liz honestly isn’t sure if she’s being sarcastic or not.

Joel shrugs. “I mean, I normally do. But it’s not a big deal if I don’t.”

Liz still half thought that Joel was joking, until she’s put the kettle on after lunch and waved away offers of help with the washing up, only for Joel to insist that as she’d cooked he’s going to have to help clear up. Ryan had accepted when she’d said that there really wasn’t room for all three of them in the kitchen, and when she takes him a cup of tea through to the living room she finds him curled up asleep in the armchair.

“Is his neck going to be okay like that?”

“I hope so.” Joel rubs at his own neck as if he’s getting sympathy pains just looking at Ryan. “I mean, goalies do bend easily…”

Liz gives up on the last hints of normal.

“Look. Both of the beds upstairs have got fresh sheets on, so if you both need to nap you might as well do it in comfort.”

“Uh… really?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.” Joel’s obviously sincere, already moving forward to wake Ryan. “Come on, Ryan, Liz has got real beds you can sleep on.”

He pauses as Ryan was getting to his feet, and looks back at Liz. “Um. One of those beds would be yours, right?”

Liz nods.

“Uh. Is it less weird if Ryan takes that one? Since we work together?”

“Yeah…” Liz hadn’t really thought about it, but it would be kind of awkward to think that Joel from IT had been in her bed. Even if it was one thousand percent platonic and she wasn’t also in the bed. “First door on the left is mine.”

Joel nods. “Cool. And thank you.”

It’s weird how not-weird it feels, finishing up with cleaning the kitchen while two guys nap upstairs. Liz doesn’t exactly forget that they’re there, but it’s not like it changes what she was doing with her afternoon. The kitchen floor needs to be mopped regardless of whether the beds upstairs are occupied.

She refuses to creep around her own home, but when she goes upstairs to the loo both bedroom doors are cracked open. A steady rumbling snore from the spare room confirms that Joel’s asleep, and a quick glance into her own room reveals Ryan curled into a tight ball right in the middle of the bed, on top of the covers. The corners of the duvet are still pristine smooth, as if he’s somehow got onto the bed without touching the edges, and he’s taken one pillow from the top of the bed and wedged it so it’s half under his head and half clutched to his chest. To be honest, he doesn’t look any more comfortable than he had in the chair.

Anyway, it’s probably kind of creepy to stand there looking at him, even (or maybe especially) if he is in her bed, so Liz pulls herself together and goes into the bathroom.

Joel and Ryan finish napping and go off to play hockey, and Liz finishes cleaning the bathroom, sticks a load of towels through the laundry, and puts the weird day out of her mind.

Power is restored to the whole village by five pm.

That night Liz goes to bed with three pillows that smell of fabric softener and one that smells of masculine deodorant.

And that should have been that.

*

The doorbell rings just as Liz is getting her things together to go and meet a friend for Sunday lunch in a local pub.

“Who on earth can that be?” The house is empty, so she’s not expecting an answer and she doesn’t get one. 

If somebody’d asked her, Liz would probably have said that she wasn’t anticipating ever meeting Joel’s friend Ryan again, so it’s a bit of a surprise to find him on her doorstep.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” He shifts his weight a little awkwardly. “Um. I just wanted to say thank you, for letting us use your house yesterday. And, um. We won. Last night. And I got a shutout, and the guys got me the game puck, so, um. Thank you.” He pushes something into her hands and took a step backwards.

“Any time.” Liz is struggling to keep up, and basic manners kick in to rescue her.

Ryan studies her for a moment, then nods and walked away.

Liz stares after him for a moment, then steps back into the house and shuts the door, frowning at the rubber disc in her hand.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

The empty house is unforthcoming with answers yet again, so she leaves the puck on the side table and googles “ice hockey shut out” on her phone while she walks to the pub.

*

“Morning.” 

“Morning.” Liz squeezes the teabag against the side of her mug with the teaspoon and gives Joel a quick smile. The best way to make sure things don’t get weird is to just not let them.

“How was the rest of your weekend?”

“Good.” Liz drops the teabag into the bin and gets the milk out of the fridge.

“Um, Ryan told me he went over to your place to say thank you on Sunday.”

“Yeah.” Liz tops off her tea and puts the lid back on the milk. “He gave me a puck.” She looks at Joel properly, and hopes that her expression shows just how baffled she feels about that.

“Ah.” Joel gives her a wry smile and spoons coffee into his mug. “Okay.”

Liz can’t help feeling that there’s something else he wants to say.

“So…” Joel reaches for the kettle and avoids looking at her. “Athletes are kind of superstitious.”

Liz doesn’t laugh at Joel, with his _ Simpsons _tie and matching socks, calling himself an athlete.

“And since we won on Saturday, there is a high chance that Ryan has decided that napping at your place was lucky.” Joel stirs his coffee. “And apparently you said something that normal people know is just routine politeness and which Ryan may have interpreted as meaning he was welcome to come back so I’m really sorry if he shows up next weekend I did not intend to start anything I promise…”

Liz blinks. She can’t remember what she’d said the day before, something innocuous like… 

“Any time. I said, any time.”

“Did you actually mean it?” 

“Uh…” It wasn’t like it had actually been a _ problem_, having them in the house. Hadn’t changed her weekend routine at all.

“Because he’ll only want to if we keep winning, and to be honest we’ve got the Tornadoes next Saturday and we’re probably going to lose.”

“Um…” Liz is going to be late for the nine o’clock meeting if she isn’t careful. “I don’t mind.”

“Really?”

She shrugs. “Really.”

Joel sighs. “Better expect him Saturday, then.”

Ryan sends her a friend request on Facebook that night. 

It’s not like Ryan is that weird, anyway. He brings bakery-fresh bread rolls when Liz mentions that she’s made a stew for lunch, and he carries on a completely normal conversation while they eat.

And then he goes upstairs for a nap, in Liz’s house. Liz cleans the living room, dusting the mantelpiece and wondering for the third time that week if the puck is supposed to be displayed lying down or standing up. It looks better standing up, but has a tendency to roll off onto the floor.

She’d changed the sheets on her bed as normal that morning, and changed the sheets on the spare bed as well since Joel had slept on them last week, and it doesn’t really occur to her until she goes upstairs that Ryan’s superstition about repeating what he’d done before a successful game last weekend would extend to napping _ on her bed _ rather than just _ in her house. _

There he is, however, curled up in the middle of the bed with one pillow, and the extra blanket she’d decided she needed last night pulled up over his feet.

Joel’s theory that they were going to lose that night’s match turns out to be unfounded.

*

**Lunch is shepherd’s pie. Come round the back if I don’t answer the door, I’m working in the garden.**

“It’s really cold, what are you doing?”

“Fixing the fence.” Liz looks up at Ryan as he comes in through the side gate. “The winds this week took a couple of panels down and next door’s dog keeps getting in.”

“Do you need a hand?”

“Nah, I’m almost done on this one.” Liz taps the final nail into the last-but-one board and reaches down for the last piece of wood. “You go on in, I’ll be in in a minute. I’ll do the other panel after lunch.”

Ryan disappears in through the back door and it doesn’t seem strange at all that he’s in her house on his own.

When Liz heads inside ten minutes later, Ryan’s setting the table for lunch.

“Smells good.”

“Thanks.” Liz smiles as she passes on her way to wash her hands. She’s cooked more, these last few weeks. She’s always done her food shop on the way home from work on a Friday, but now she spends a bit of time chopping vegetables and putting in the prep work for several home cooked meals. It feels like it’s worth the effort of cooking from scratch when she’s not just cooking for herself, and if she’s feeding Ryan on Saturday she might as well have a couple of decent things to eat in the week as well. 

*

The win streak has to come to an end eventually, as Liz finds out when Joel brings her a fancy coffee from the place over the road one Monday morning.

“I’m drowning my sorrows,” he explains, putting the paper cup on her desk. “So I thought you might like one too.”

“Drowning your sorrows?” Liz glances at the time on her Fitbit. “At eight forty seven in the morning?”

“That’s why it’s a premium blend extra shot gingerbread cappuccino and not scotch.” Joel sips his coffee, and Liz lifts the lid on her cup with some trepidation. “Yours is just a latte, though, because I don’t know your regular order.”

Liz presses the lid back into place. “That is my regular order, actually.”

“Cool.” Joel keeps standing there like he’s hoping for the conversation to continue, and Liz gives in.

“Sorry about the game on Saturday.”

Joel shrugs, but it’s clearly a bigger deal than he wants to let on. “It happens.”

Liz reads between the lines. It happens, but he’s sad about it and there’s nobody else here he can talk to about hockey.

Not that Liz cares about the sport, particularly, but she has somehow ended up following the team on Twitter. Just to keep an eye on the scores.

“Back at it next week.” She tried to sound positive, and apparently it works as Joel’s shoulders straighten imperceptibly.

“Yeah.” He shifts his weight, obviously now ready to return to the IT department. “At least you get your Saturdays back, now. Get back to normal without Ryan underfoot the whole time.”

He wanders away, and Liz is surprised to realise that she’s almost disappointed that Ryan’s going to stop coming over for lunch and a nap now that the win streak is broken. He’s weird, but she’s kind of got used to having him around.

There’s no text message from Ryan on Saturday morning. The messages have developed over the weeks from _ is it okay to come over _ to _ would you like me to bring anything _ to last week’s _ on my way, got the potatoes _and it’s weird that her phone is just… blank.

Liz cleans the kitchen anyway, and makes herself a sandwich for lunch because she doesn’t feel like cooking just for one.

She’s out of sorts in the afternoon, unable to settle, so she goes out. There’s no reason not to, with nobody napping upstairs to wait for, so she accidentally spends far too much money at Dunelm because her time is her own and she can do what she likes with it.

It’s not until she’s settled down in front of the television for the evening, M&S ready meal waiting in the fridge, and automatically opens Twitter for the game updates that she realises Ryan and Joel have an away game instead of a home game tonight, all the way down in Kent. They normally play their away games on Sundays, but it looks like things are backwards this week and they’re playing at home tomorrow.

Ryan texts first thing in the morning.

**Faceoff’s an hour earlier on Sundays, okay if I come over for 12?**

Liz just sends back the thumbs up emoji, and double checks that she’s got everything she needs to make risotto.

“Smells good.” Ryan has recently started coming in through the side gate and letting himself in through the back door. “Found these for you.” He puts something on the end of the breakfast bar with a little clatter, and goes to the sink to wash his hands. “Shall I set the table?”

He’s not expecting an answer, he’s taken on setting the table as his job ever since the day he found Liz repairing the fence.

“Parmesan’s in the fridge if you want to put that out.”

Ryan gets the cheese out of the fridge without answering and heads through to the other room.

“New cushions? Nice.”

“Thanks. Went a bit mad in Dunelm yesterday.” Liz takes the risotto off the heat and goes to get the flat bowls from the cupboard, pausing at the end of the counter to inspect the handful of pebbles he’s left there. They’re all different colours, streaked with veins, and they look like they’d be really satisfying to hold.

***

####  **21 August, 2054**

“So he came over even though they’d lost?” Esme tips the pebbles out of the little mesh bag, which probably held craft-fair jewellery at one time and now has a tag on the ribbon dated _ 23rd March 2014. _ She puts the bag aside and inspects the pebbles one by one.

“Yes.” Liz smiles when she thinks about it. “Joel thought he was only coming over while they were winning, and so I thought that too, but neither of us actually _ asked_. And so he turned up anyway.”

“Why did he get you these?” Esme lays the pebbles out along her leg, in order of size.

Liz shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think there was any particular reason. He just liked them so he picked them up and brought them with him.”

“That’s cool, though.” Esme smooths her fingers over the stones. “Which one is your favourite?”

“I can’t choose.” Liz doesn’t think it’s a silly question. “I keep changing my mind, even after all these years.” She picks up the greyest of the pebbles. “There used to be five of them, but one went missing when the kids were young. Your mum swore blind that Uncle Jacob took it, and Jacob always said he knew nothing about it.”

Esme actually smiles, because she likes to think of her mum and uncle being her age and squabbling all the time, and picks up the bag to put the pebbles away, holding it out so that Liz can drop the last stone in, and then tightening the drawstring and tucking it back into the box.

“So if he used to come over before games, what happened in the off season? If these were from March, that must have been close to the end of the games?”

“It was almost the last week of the season, I think.” It’s hard to remember exactly after so many years. “There might have been one more week of the season? They changed the dates at one point so the season finished a couple of weeks earlier, but I think that was a couple of years later.... Anyway, yes, they were just finishing their season so I was kind of expecting him to disappear.”

Esme picks up a paper bag with _ Monday 26th May 2014 _scrawled on it in faded pencil. She’s careful with it, obviously realising that the contents are delicate. “But he didn’t, did he?”

Liz smiles. “No. He didn’t.”

***

####  **26 May, 2014**

It’s the first time Liz has been in a car with Ryan, and she’s got no way of knowing whether he always drives with great concentration and uses his indicators, or whether he’s being careful because it’s the first time he’s driven her anywhere.

He picks a spot in the car park that’s not near any puddles, even though they’re both wearing suitable footwear for exploring a nature reserve.

This had started with Ryan insisting that he wanted to take her out for lunch, since she’d fed him for so many weeks during the season, and grown into lunch at the cafe in the Wolseley Centre, with a country walk. 

It’s the bank holiday weekend, so there are lots of families around, but they choose the longest walk on the little map that Ryan picks up in the visitor’s centre and as they’re unencumbered by pushchairs or small children they set a pace that passes families and leaves the noise behind them.

The pace seems to suit both of them, which is nice. Liz hates walking with people who can’t keep up, and although Ryan’s shoes look less broken in than hers, he’s a professional athlete and he’s not slowing her down.

It feels a bit like a date.

Ryan’s been living with Joel since last summer, when he moved out of the accommodation the team provided for him, but didn’t want to go back to his parents again.

“I’m just… I’m 25, you know?” He pauses. “26. Now. Um. Anyway, too old to be going back to Mum and Dad, yeah? And I was working at the building society, so.”

Ryan has a part time job that’s something to do with administration support for mortgages. It sounds pretty dull, but then it’s not like Liz’s job is much more exciting.

“Anyway, Joel was complaining that when, um…” he has to think to remember Joel’s ex’s name. “...Karen? When she moved out he’d got to pay the whole mortgage himself, and Bircher said he should get a lodger, and I said _ I’m looking for somewhere to live, _ like, mostly a joke, and moved in like two weeks later.”

Liz bought her house when her grandpa died. “Mum’s an only child, and so am I, so he split it between us. Turned out he had a lot more in the bank than we thought, because he never spent anything. I don’t think he’d bought any new clothes since about 1990, definitely. Anyway, it was enough to put down a deposit, so. House.”

Ryan’s not an only child. “My brother’s like eight years older than me. My parents had only been together a few months when Mum got pregnant, so I like to remind him that he was an accident on a regular basis - but actually he was pretty cool with me following him around everywhere.”

“Does he play hockey?”

Ryan laughs. “No! He’s all about cricket. Watches football, plays pub level cricket. He comes to the odd game, but he doesn’t really know what’s going on. I’m working on my nephew.”

He stops suddenly, and takes a couple of steps off the path, returning a moment later with a blue and white feather. “What do you think, mallard duck?”

Liz takes the feather when he holds it out. “Yeah, probably.” Ryan doesn’t seem to want the feather back, so after a moment she tucks it into the top pocket of her shirt.

“My brother’s got this lunatic spaniel as well.” Ryan continues. “We had a dog when we were growing up but I’m sure this one’s got something wrong with it.”

“Like what?” Liz thinks he’s joking, but she’s only about 80% sure.

“Oh, it’s just nuts. It just never stops.”

“That’s just spaniels, though, isn’t it? My best friend at school, her family had a springer and it was just…” Liz searches for a word they haven’t already used. “Crazy.”

“Maybe. Our old dog was a bit of a mixture, and they’re usually smarter, right?”

“Would you want a dog yourself?”

Ryan shakes his head. “Not in Joel’s house. And I wouldn’t if I lived alone because it’s not fair when I have away games, I’m gone for hours.”

He darts off the path again and comes back with a large white feather. “What do you reckon, swan or goose?”

Liz blinks and takes the feather automatically. “How on earth would I know?”

Ryan laughs. “Yeah, okay.” He watches the feather as Liz spins it between her finger and thumb. “Could be either. Gwan?”

It takes her a second to catch on, but she grins when she gets it. “Seese? Soose.”

“Soose feather.” Ryan smiles, and she smiles back as she tucks the feather into her pocket next to the probably-mallard.

By the time they get back to the cafe, they’ve added a jet black crow-or-rook feather to the collection along with a tiny bright blue one which they both think is from a kingfisher.

“This was fun.” Liz releases her seatbelt when Ryan parks outside her house.

“Maybe we can do it again some time.”

The atmosphere has shifted a bit. It’s not bad, but it’s… different. Charged?

“It’s going to be strange not having you over for lunch every weekend.” Liz admits, hoping that it’s the right thing to say.

“Maybe…” Ryan clear his throat and starts again. “Do you fancy going to the cinema on Saturday? Since there’s no hockey?”

“Yes.” Liz has no idea what’s on at the moment. “I’d like that.”

“We can’t see Postman Pat, though.” Ryan warns. “I’ve promised my nephew I’ll take him to that one.”

“Okay.” Liz grins. “I’m sure we’ll find something else.”

“Cool.” Ryan grins back. “Um. I’ll, uh, text you, then.”

“Yeah.” Liz finally reaches for the door handle. “I’ll, um, I’ll see you Saturday, then.”

***

####  **21 August, 2054**

“Did you ever decide if it was a swan or a goose feather?” Esme holds the feather carefully on the flat of her hand.

“I tried to research it once.” Liz admits. “But I just got this really academic article about the construction of the feather. I think that these bits,” she points carefully to the parts that she’s never forgotten are called _ barbules, _ “are different in swan and goose feathers, but with only one feather we had nothing to compare it to, so we never did find out for sure.”

Esme lets Liz deal with putting the feathers carefully back into the bag, and her attention moves on to the next item in the box.

“Why are these here?” She picks out the little bundle of lacing, pausing before she tries to unpick the knot.. “Can I…?”

“Yes. Just be careful, they were used a lot.”

Esme loosens the knot and unfolds the laces. They’re white - or they were once - with blue threads running through them. The one which is still intact is three metres long, and Esme has to get off the futon to lay it out along the floor. She lays the broken one next to it, carefully matching the frayed ends where it snapped.

“Why did you keep it?”

***

####  **25 October, 2014**

This is the third game that Liz has been to, resisting the temptation to go to all of Ryan’s games now that he’s officially her boyfriend and not just some weird guy who naps in her house on match days. If she goes to too many, Ryan will make a superstition out of it and then she’ll have to go to all of them. And it’s fun, but she’s not sure that she’s ready for it to take over her life.

This is the third game that Liz has been to, and it’s the first time that Ryan hasn’t come out onto the ice with the rest of the guys when warm up started. 

She’s watching warm up from by the gate where the players go onto the ice, mostly because she’d been introduced to the captain’s family over the summer and the kids have taken it on themselves to teach her absolutely everything about ice hockey, and they always watch warm up from as close to the gate as they can get and they’ve insisted that Liz has to come with them.

They’re four and six, so she’s not putting too much stock into the accuracy of what they’re telling her, but they’re nice kids.

“Where’s Ryan?” Kayla turns to Liz, as if she’s going to know. “He’s not there.”

“Yes he is.” Oscar has all the scorn of an older brother who doesn’t need to fact check his little sister’s statements before he contradicts them. “He’s…” 

Oscar scans the ice with a practiced eye, and Ryan’s not there.

“He’s not there.”

There are two pairs of eyes turned on Liz now, and she doesn’t know what to tell them. Luckily Ryan picks that moment to clump out of the dressing room.

“Broke a lace.” He tells her, pushing the offending item into her hand as a member of staff opens the gate for him. “Had to change it.”

And then he’s gone, and Liz is left holding a broken skate lace.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” It’s a rhetorical question, but Kayla doesn’t understand that.

“You have to keep it.” She’s very serious about it. “It’s lucky when the players give you something.”

Ryan apparently didn’t have time to switch both laces before warm up, because she doesn’t get handed the second lace, the whole one, until after the game.

“Why do I want this?”

The question’s aimed at thin air, as Ryan’s already vanishing in the direction of the side room where the players get fed after the game, leaving her standing in the bar with a diet coke in one hand and three metres of skate lace in the other.

“You can’t reason with them.” The team’s other goalie is a guy called Chris, and Liz has been introduced to his girlfriend because apparently they form their own subset within the group of players’ families. “They’re all a bit odd, you just kind of have to roll with it.” Laura nods at the lace. “At least they don’t smell as bad as most of the kit.”

It’s not like they smell _ good_, though…

***

####  **21 August, 2054**

Esme folds the laces back up and reties them in an approximation of the way she found them, tucking them back into their spot in the box.

“More laces?” She picks up a blue lace, a shorter, broken piece. “Oh, no, I see.” She holds it up so the key dangles. “What’s this from?”

Liz laughs. “I have no idea.”

***

####  **19 July, 2016**

The van’s packed by ten am, Liz’s organisational skills more than up to the challenge of folding the last few years of her life into boxes.

Ryan’s possessions were a bit more of a challenge, because the man’s a bit of a pack rat, but the negotiations over what did and did not need to be kept were resolved a couple of weeks ago and by the time the removal guys turned up yesterday to pack up the big items, all the smaller stuff was in neatly labelled boxes.

It’s a bit sad, leaving her first house behind, but it’s exciting too. Getting a place that’s _ theirs _ instead of Liz’s-house-that-Ryan-also-lives-in. Moving closer to Leicester, because Ryan had a good season with his new team last year, has been signed on for two more, and it makes sense to get him closer to training and games if they can do it without lengthening Liz’s commute. It’s going to take her a similar amount of time to get to and from work from the new house, just in the opposite direction.

The van is packed, and Liz has followed the removal men through the house as they’ve emptied each room, wiping the windowsills, vacuuming and then closing the door.

She’s left a toilet roll and the end of the soap in the bathroom for new people, and the box of weird lightbulbs for the kitchen are on the breakfast bar because they won’t fit any of the lights in the new house.

Now the vacuum cleaner is in the back of Ryan’s car, and all they have to do is hand the front door keys to the estate agent.

The rest of the keys - back door, windows, side gate - are laid out on the counter, on a sheet of paper so that Liz can label them for the new owners.

“What about this one?” Ryan’s laid his back door and side gate keys in the right places, and he’s got one left.

“What’s it for?” Liz doesn’t recognise the key. She doesn’t have one the same.

“I thought you’d know.” Ryan looks at the key in the palm of his hand. “It’s not from Joel’s house, I checked when I moved out.”

“Your parents?”

Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t have keys to their new place.” It’s been about eighteen months since his parents moved to Somerset and bought a bed and breakfast. 

Liz shrugs. “I have no idea.”

Ryan wrinkles his nose and then puts the key in his pocket. “Better hang on to it, it might be useful.”

***

####  **21 August 2054**

The key doesn’t hold Esme’s attention for long, and she picks up the next item, still in its original case.

“Jewellery?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, opening the case instead. “Oh!” She turns her head to look at Liz. “Why is this in here instead of with the others?”

“Because he gave that one to me.”

***

####  **19 March 2017**

_ Pumas v Scorpions _

They’d gone into this weekend, the last weekend of the season, at the top of the league by just one point.

One point ahead of the Pumas. One point ahead of Ryan’s old team, even if it has been a couple of years since he’s played for them.

It’s far too close. They both had two games, and if the Pumas get one more win than the Scorpions do, they’ll overtake them.

Last night they both won, so they’re coming into tonight’s game in the same situation - except that they’re playing each other, so they can’t both win.

If either of them win in regulation, they take the league. If the Scorpions win in overtime, they take the league. If the Pumas win in overtime, they go level on points and it comes down to goal difference, and the Pumas will take it.

Liz feels a bit sick.

Ryan’s carrying on like it’s any other day. Liz had woken up this morning to cool sheets on his side of the bed and a cup of coffee on her bedside table. Downstairs, Ryan was working through his yoga routine - Liz has reaped the benefits of having such a flexible boyfriend - and everything was set out in the kitchen so that one of them could make omelettes and the other could make the toast.

Life’s a bit easier since they moved. The first season after Ryan switched teams, when they were still living much closer to the Pumas’ rink than they are now, it would have been ridiculous for him to come all the way down to Leicester and then get the bus back up with his teammates. 

It’s only about an hour’s drive up to Stoke, so Liz drops Ryan off at the rink to get the bus with his teammates and gets a coffee with the girls before they follow the bus. They don’t normally travel in a pack, but.

This is an important game.

Liz feels sick. She’s watched Ryan’s team battle back from 2-0 down, forcing the score to 2-2, but the final seconds are trickling away and they can’t get that go-ahead goal. They have to score, they have to.

The buzzer goes for the end of the period and the end of regulation play. Now it’s five minutes of sudden-death 3-on-3.

Liz watches Ryan skate into the bench where the team are agreeing the plan for the next stage of the game. He lifts his mask and squirts water into his mouth, totally focused on the game and the guys around him and oblivious to the noise of the crowd.

Liz can’t breathe.

“I hate this. I can’t watch.”

Next to her, Marie reaches out and grabs Liz’s hand. Liz squeezes back. The captain’s wife made an effort to welcome Liz when Ryan joined the team, and they’ve got enough in common away from hockey that they’ve become friends in their own right.

“They can do this.” Marie turns her attention to the ice, where the referee has called the guys in for the face off. She doesn’t relax her death grip on Liz’s hand, though.

Overtime is awful, because the whole thing could end any second. It’s also faster than the rest of the game, less bodies on the ice, more space to skate. More chance that a mistake could cost them the game, and tonight, the league title.

Liz doesn’t want to watch.

“Liz.” Marie squeezes her fingers even harder and Liz looks up. On the ice, Marie’s husband has the puck, and a bit of space. The taller of the Czech guys - Liz still struggles to remember which is which based on numbers and surnames, she does much better when they don’t have helmets on and she can see their hair - has got himself into a gap on the ice, and Dave passes the puck. The Pumas’ goalie - Chris, who used to be Ryan’s mentor - moves to cover him and Liz can suddenly see how it’s going to go a split second before it all unfolds, as the Czech guy takes a stride in to meet the puck that Dave’s sent to him, and passes it back to Dave a split second faster than Chris would have thought he could, and then Dave’s stuffing the puck in between Chris’ skate and the post and it’s in the net.

It’s in the net.

It’s in the net!

Marie’s leapt to her feet, dragging Liz with her, and she’s screaming, and hugging Liz, and then she lets go to hug the person on her other side, and Liz does the same, because down on the ice the guys are throwing gloves and sticks aside and rushing down to hurl themselves at Ryan, and-

And they’ve _ won. _

“Come on.” Marie grabs her bag with one hand and Liz’s hand with the other. “Let’s go down to the bench.”

The next bit takes forever, as the red carpet is unrolled and the Pumas go up one by one to collect runner-up medals that they obviously don’t want. Liz and Marie and the rest of the girls didn’t get down to the bench in time to talk to the guys before they had to stay at their own end of the ice for the presentations, but they’ve been spotted.

And finally, the last of the runner-up medals goes to number 90, Brett Macarthy, and they move on to the winners.

It goes in order of the numbers that the guys wear, so they start with 3, Alex Thompson. 

11, Mitch Houghton. 

12, Tony Ramsey. 

15, Gavin Townsend. 18, Valeri Ezeriņš, 25, Trevor Sanders, 

29, Dominik Štěpán.

And the one Liz has been waiting for, 35. Ryan Lloyd.

Most of the guys have family crowding the bench area now, and each of them has come over for congratulatory hugs after collecting their medals, before they go back out to their teammates on the ice.

Ryan’s lost his glove and blocker along with his helmet and his stick, somewhere in the mess of kit scattered across the ice. His hands look ridiculously tiny in his giant sleeves, as he reaches for Liz.

She hugs him back, hard, ignoring how bulky and uncomfortable he is in his gear. “Well done. I’m so proud of you, babe!”

He pulls her in for a kiss that’s awkward because of the boards in the way and only doesn’t get chirped because the rest of the guys had done the same with their wives and girlfriends when they came to the bench. He smells so bad and Liz loves him so much.

“Here.” He pushes the medal in its box into her hands, just as Marie’s Dave reaches the bench and jumps onto Ryan’s back with a whoop.

“Get off me, you tit.” Ryan rolls his eyes at Liz with a grin and then twists so that he can shake Dave off his back within reach of Marie. He gives them a second and then takes hold of the back of Dave’s jersey. “Come on, Dingo, there’s a cup to collect.”

Liz tucks the medal box safely into her jacket pocket and zips it closed.

***

####  **22 June 2019**

“We’re not keeping all of it.” Liz surveys the boxes that Mum’s left in their house while they were on honeymoon. “We don’t have room and we don’t need it.”

Mum’s handled all of the post-wedding clearing up. Liz and Ryan spent two weeks in the south of France, and Mum made sure that all of the hired things went back to suppliers, forced table decorations and excess cake on passers-by, dealt with the trail of hairpins and destruction from Liz getting ready, and took her wedding dress to be cleaned.

They’re left with a pile of menus and orders of service, table decorations, ribbons from chair backs and assorted paraphernalia.

Some things are obvious keepers, like the guest book full of Polaroid photos of their friends and family.

Some things can obviously be got rid of - they don’t need more than one order or service or menu, they don’t need more than one of the custom printed paper napkins from the evening buffet.

“We should keep something out.” Ryan moves a huge tangle of fairy lights - a future headache for one of them, Liz is sure. “Have something on display. Something special.”

Liz isn’t at all surprised when he makes a triumphant noise and produces the cake topper from the array of stuff covering the table.

One of Liz’s cousins made it for them. She’s artistic, good at crafts, and the little clay figures are really detailed and do actually kind of look like Liz and Ryan. Little Ryan is wearing a set of goalie pads, glove on one hand and the other hand free to hold hands with Little Liz. The pads are painted up in black and white, like he’s had his jersey and pads done to look like his wedding suit. The mask sits by his feet, painstakingly detailed to look like his real one. Little Liz has hiking boots on under her wedding dress, and a backpack placed to mirror Ryan’s mask. Her wedding flowers are sticking out of the bag.

“Yeah.” Liz takes the little model from Ryan’s hand and he leans down to kiss her. “This one.”

***

####  **21 August 2054**

“That’s so cool.” Esme inspects the figures carefully. “Was Grandad’s hair really that colour?”

Liz laughs. “Yeah, it was once! He always said that your mum turned the front half grey and your uncle did the back.”

“And was this what your dress really looked like?”

“It was. My cousin made these, and she came to some of the dress fittings to get it right. It meant Grandad couldn’t see this until the reception.”

“So cool.” Esme turns the model over in her hands, inspecting it from every angle, before passing it back to Liz to be carefully packed away. “What’s next?”

These aren’t fragile at all, a collection of brightly coloured wrappers in a paper bag.

Esme tips them out onto the futon. “Do they need to be in order?”

“No.” Liz puts the cake topper away and turns her attention to the wrappers.

“What are they from?” Esme picks up one of the wrappers so she can look more closely. “Are they sweets?”

“Yeah.” Liz picks up one of the wrappers. “They don’t make them any more, but I had big cravings for them when I was pregnant with your mum and they had these limited edition wrappers, so of course your grandad wanted to collect the whole set.”

“Obviously.”

***

####  **7 January 2020**

**Where are you?**

Liz is completely justified in sending the text. Five more minutes and she’ll call him. She’s not being a nag or suffocating him, Ryan’s gone out on a very important errand and he’s been gone way too long. Ages.

It takes less than five minutes to drive down to the Co-op at this time of night, then a couple of minutes to grab what he went for, maybe a couple of minutes to pay if the person at the till is particularly chatty, and then less than five minutes to drive home.

He’s been gone for thirty minutes now.

Thirty five minutes. Liz presses the call button on his contact screen.

He doesn’t even wait for her to speak when he answers.“Hi, hi, yes, babe, I’m just getting them now and I will be right home. Twenty minutes, I promise.”

“Twenty minutes? Where are you?”

“Uh…”

“Ryan…”

“Look, I just thought, since I’d got the car out anyway…”

Liz works out what’s happened a second before he tells her.

“...I thought I might as well go to ASDA.”

No wonder it’s taking him so long, if he’s gone all the way to ASDA.

“What for?” Liz asks, although she knows the answer. “They’ve got them in the Co-op…”

“Um.” She doesn’t need to be able to see Ryan to know he’s running his hand through his hair like he does when he’s been caught out in something. “Well.”

“Just buy them and come home.”

Liz is vaguely aware that on a rational level it’s not entirely fair to be angry with Ryan for taking over an hour instead of twenty minutes to go out and buy her some sweets, but then again she’s six months pregnant and the corner shop near her office had run out of the one thing she absolutely _ has _ to have, and Ryan’s making her wait for entirely selfish reasons.

Plus it’s late, and she’s tired.

It’s just the hormones making her cry.

She’s going to go to bed before he gets home, just because she’s tired. She’s not sulking.

She doesn’t hear Ryan come in, but when she wakes up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom yet again, the sweets are on her bedside table.

He’s bought enough to be able to arrange them so they spell out _ sorry. _

***

####  **21 August 2054**

“It used to drive me mad when he’d spend ages looking for wrappers he hadn’t got yet when all I wanted to do was eat the contents.” Liz watches as Esme makes patterns out of the different wrappers. “I got home from work one day and he’d been on the internet and bought a whole load in bulk.” It still makes Liz smile, thinking of the stack of boxes in the garage. “Then I went right off them after that and it took him ages to get through them all himself.”

“Did he get all the wrappers in the end?”

Liz laughs. “Almost. There was one that he couldn’t get and it drove him mad.” She looks at the spread of wrappers, and picks out the familiar shade of cyan blue. “He was so frustrated that he couldn’t complete the set. And then I found it, at a charity fete that I’d only gone to because I wanted to get out of the house with the baby - with your mum. There was a game where the prizes were sweets, and they had that one.”

“Did you win the game?”

“No!” Liz laughed. “It was throwing balls into tin cans, or something like that, which I’m not very good at, so I gave them a fiver - which was a reasonable donation for that sort of thing back then - and they just let me have it. I gave it to him for his first Father’s Day.”

Esme lets Liz gather the wrappers back into their paper bag, and reaches for the last item in the box. 

“What’s this? Another puck?”

She’s just picking it up when the front door bangs downstairs.

“Anybody home?”

“We’ve got ice cream!”

Esme drops the puck, because she’s not too cool for ice cream. Nobody in Liz’s family has ever been too cool for ice cream.

Liz puts the wrappers and the second puck back into the box, and places the lid carefully back on top, brushing away the dust. Downstairs, Esme sounds almost enthusiastic, and the house always feels so much fuller when there are young voices.

“I put yours in the freezer.”

Liz jumps. “Bell!”

It’s been a running joke for decades that Ryan is too quiet on his feet and should have to wear a bell so he doesn’t sneak up on Liz, a joke so old it no longer needs to be said in its entirety.

“Sorry.” She can tell from his grin that he’s not sorry, but that he hadn’t intended to startle her. There’s a different grin when he does it on purpose.

“Put my what in the freezer?”

“Ice cream.” 

Liz carefully slides the memory box back onto the shelf and closes the cupboard door.

“Thank you. Esme eating hers now?”

Ryan nods. “I made Ray wait until we got home instead of eating in the car.” Their middle grandchild is both a messy eater and prone to carsickness.

“Good plan. Nice day?”

“Yeah.” Ryan sits on the end of the futon. “You should have come.”

Liz rolls her eyes at him and he grins. They both know that the golf club’s charity family fun day is not for her - Liz and Esme are firmly in agreement that the words “golf” and “fun” do not belong together.

“Got you something.” Ryan digs in his pocket and pulls out something misshapen that’s been inexpertly wrapped in tissue paper. “They had a craft stall.”

“Wow. Whatever can it be?” Liz takes it from him.

“You’ll never guess.”

Liz carefully removes the tissue paper to find a… “What is it?”

“It’s a caterpillar.”

“A caterpillar.”

On closer inspection, it is definitely a caterpillar. Made of golf balls. With tees for antennae and legs. 

“Thanks, love.” Liz gives him a kiss, like she usually does when he brings her these little gifts. “I’ll find somewhere to put it downstairs.”

There’s a space on one of the shelves in the dining room which will be perfect.

“Ray’s going to take a nap so he’s not too tired to go out for dinner tonight.” It’s clear from Ryan’s expression that this was not Ray’s own idea, and Liz fills in the blanks for herself about how a day at the golf club, even a family fun day, can be a bit over-tiring when you’re nine. “I suggested he could nap on our bed.”

“Good idea.” Liz glances at the hard drives full of photographs, still untouched from where she and Esme had been distracted by the memory box, and decided to save that project for another day. “What sort of ice cream did you get me?”

“Raspberry cone.” Ryan leads the way along the landing

“The chocolate covered one?”

“Of course.” Ryan starts down the stairs, and Liz pauses to glance into their bedroom and check on Ray.

He’s fast asleep already, always quick to drop off despite his protestations that he’s not tired, curled right in the middle of the bed with his arms wrapped around the stuffed whale that Liz had been given for Christmas last year. Niamh’s the youngest grandchild, at least for the next few months until the baby comes, and she’s old enough now to choose presents for people whilst still young enough to pick what she would want instead of something tailored to the recipient. It doesn’t matter, Liz loves her whale, and it looks like Ray does too.

The corners of the bed are pristine, as if Ray has somehow got onto the bed without touching the edges.

Liz gently pulls the door to, and goes downstairs to display her caterpillar.


	2. The last thing in the box

_ **Date**_ **_withheld_ **

Tonight, the kid who’s taken Ryan’s spot on the roster - no, actually, that’s not fair.

That makes it sound like the kid pushed Ryan out, but that’s not what happened. Ryan’s not as young as he was, not as flexible. He’s got experience up to the gills, but the fact of the matter is that the kid is just better than Ryan now.

Ryan’s played his share of games, but the kid’s share is bigger, as it should be.

They’ve made it to playoffs, and it’s the kid who backstopped them here. The team led the way, it’s not like they’ve only made it on the kid’s slim shoulders, but Ryan hasn’t been the number one guy for a couple of years now.

Ryan creaks when he gets out of bed in the mornings, now, and it’s not like he’s _ old. _

He’s just not as young as he was.

They’ve made it to playoffs, qualified a few weeks back and there’s no way that tonight’s game can impact the standings or who they face in the first round. It’s the last home game of the regular season, the kid is on the bench, and Ryan’s taking his last start.

It won’t be officially announced until the end of the post-season, but the rumours have been swirling and Ryan doesn’t want anybody to stop them. It makes the atmosphere special, all these people who want him to win, not just the team but Ryan himself, because they know it’s probably his last time out.

Unless something happens to the kid during playoffs, and nobody wants that, Ryan’s on the bench from here to the end.

It’s…

There’s no such thing as a perfect game.

But the boys know, know for a fact rather than a rumour, that all being well this is his last game. The D step up, everybody steps up. They close it down, keep the pucks away, take the game to the other team.

Ryan gets enough action to keep him warm, keep him in the game, but the guys are playing like the ice slopes away from his net.

Nobody says the S-word, of course, but that’s the dream. To end your career with a perfect score.

It’s the W that’s important, though, it’s being part of a team who are flying high.

It’s the hugs at the end.

The handshake line that takes forever, because the guys on the other team know what tonight is too. He’s played with so many of them over the years, it’s like they’re all his team in the end, in this moment.

They call him up for photos, which probably gives it away to the people in the crowd who suspect but don’t know, when Liz comes out onto the tired red carpet with the kids so that they can get a shot together, Liz a little more polished than normal because she knew this was coming, the kids both wearing his jersey (one home, one away) and neither of them covered in hot chocolate for once. Ryan gets to pose with them one last time, sweaty in his gear and the last in the long series of jerseys he’s worn during his career.

He’s not going to stop playing, but he won’t play pro any more. Maybe a little rec league, now and then. Coach the kids, perhaps.

The boys would have made sure that he got the puck, but the referee takes care of it for them, handing it to Ryan in an unplanned photo opportunity.

Ryan smiles, holds the puck. Shake’s the ref’s hand for the camera. Poses with his family once more, and then it’s time to go. They’ve got a lap to skate, fans to thank for their support this season, and then he’s got stretches and a shower waiting for him.

Ryan hands the puck from his last professional game to Liz before she leaves the ice. She’ll keep it safe for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to Docbeeski for the beta (and for not shouting at me for writing things that are not what I'm supposed to be writing...)


End file.
